SATe [✔]

[7] phthartic

"You've been doing a lot of overtime, Bastian." Chester had mentioned as I walked into his office on a perfectly breezy Thursday morning.

I couldn't disagree with him. There was no doubt in my mind that I'd been pushing myself to fill my days with work, and anything else that would keep me feeling productive; I'd taken up a gym membership, joined a few classes at the local library and offered to babysit for friends. The moment I stopped moving and even contemplated resting was the same moment my hands would shake, and my mind would run wild; images of death and destruction flooding over.

I even tried to avoid going home because as soon as I saw Hannah or Timothy, the images of my real parents would flash in my mind. A constant reminder that I had abandoned my past life and replaced it with one I didn't necessarily deserve.

Chester was currently flicking through the dark red planner he kept on his desk, of which he actively looked in and added to every morning. Yet it was only now he was taking a highlighter and striking through every shift I'd completed recently. Some of those pages had more highlighted sections than not.

"Actually... now that I look at it, you've done more overtime in the past two months than ever before. Everything all right at home?" He asked with genuine concern, looking away from the book and up at me. I shifted uncomfortably against the carpet of his office, unsure which of my planned lies to tell him. It wasn't necessarily my home life that was the true issue.

Of course, even without the reminder of what happened eleven years ago, I still felt uncomfortable around Hannah and Timothy. That was especially true now that I knew the exact circumstances of my real parents' death. It had only gotten worse when I'd found out about Allison. I didn't know how to stomach it at first, not even being able to picture her face making it difficult. I could try to picture my life before and force her into the memories like a misshapen puzzle piece but nothing ever felt right. The only thing that triggered anything were those damn ballerina slippers on the stairs. Is that all I had left of her?

The information had eventually sunk in after a few days sitting on the floor of my room and clinging to my knees as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried with all of my might to imagine that little girl and what became of her. All I could truly feel was a mesmerizing amount of anger; and with no true outlet for it, it had fallen on my 'mother', Hannah, to deal with.

I had lashed out more in these past two months than I could really comprehend, but she didn't hold any of it against me. Part of me wished she would, the other, the more rational side of me, knew that she still thought I was her son. Her real son. I didn't have it in me to take that away from her and replace it with pure tragedy.

She continued to look at me with eyes of love. The eyes a mother can only give to their child. Tim on the other hand would give me a look that expressed a sense of sadness with no true explanation. It was like there was always something on the edge of being said, waiting on his lips like a threat.